A Clace Rant by Dannoh403
This is a little rant I felt like doing today. I've recently been reading The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. I love the books and the storyline, but the main romance I have some issues with. I suppose this contains spoilers for the series, so if you haven't read or are reading the series currently, tread lightly. DISCLAIMER: I only finished book four "City Of Fallen Angels" today, so my knowledge is limited by the fact I haven't read the one other available book in the series: "City of Lost Souls." The Actual Ranting "Clace" is the official ship name for the fan favorite pairing of the main protagonist, Clary Fray/Fairchild/Morgenstern and Jace Lightwood/Wayland/Morgenstern/Herondale. Yes, they do have lots of last names, and yes, they do share one. (It's extremely complicated). The Mortal Instruments follows the story of a normal young adult, who by a sudden chance meeting is thrown into a world where all the childhood stories and myths she heard are all too real, and dangerous. I'll spare all the details of the storyline, since it would take forever, and I'm here to talk about the relationship. Like pretty much every single book in the "Young Adult" category, there is a romantic subplot. I sometimes find myself to the omnipresent idea of love falling-into. The Mortal Instruments (From now on, abbreviated to TMI so that my poor fingers don't cramp up) stays well and true to this tune. When Clary is sucked into the world of Shadowhunters, demons, and pretty much everything you'd see on Supernatural, she brings her long time best friend Simon with her. Now, before we continue, I'll admit I'm a bit biased towards Simon because he is literally the best. Ever. Of all time. Simon and Clary have been friends since early childhood. Simon has always been loyal, trustworthy, and they've had a perfect friendship. Of course, when things are perfect, people start hinting things. When people start hinting at things, sometimes one member of the friendship believes these things. In this case, it is Simon, who falls for his best friend. (Oh how tragic.) Ranter's Sidenote: I personally feel that if Clary and Simon had never been sucked into the shadowhunter world, they probably would've dated at some point. Simon's feelings persist as his safe and secure world crashes down, showing him the dark reality of vampires and other horrible things. Clary, still blissfully unaware, finds herself falling for the sweet, charismatic, sarcastic, brooding, and suprise, sexy shadowhunter Jace WayLightSternDale. Jace and Clary grow closer over the first half of book one, and finally, they share a romantic moment on Clary's birthday. When they arrive back at Clary's room, they find Simon in there, which all around makes an awkward scene. Jace storms off in a cloud of brooding and Simon admits his feelings for Clary, and then leaves. Clary doesn't seem too bothered by her best friend's secret, because she's too worried about her new hot boyfriend maybe dumping her. FAST FORWARD. End of Book One, we discover the shocking truth. Not only is Valentine (Our strangely named antagonist) Clary's father, but also Jace's. The two of them have been star crossed, and can no longer pursue a romantic relationship. Unless, of course, they live in the deep-south. (DISCLAIMER: This is a joke, if you live in the deep south, don't take offense. I live there too, and this was a light hearted crack.) So, despite their disappointment, Clace splits up because incest is wrong, right? Wrong. Throughout Books Two and Three, Jace continues to pursue Clary, because he finds her so mind-numbingly beautiful that he just can't help it. We later discover that he sometimes makes himself feel like that, just so it can make him hate himself even more. (Jace is a bit...Odd.) He does this a lot actually, and the more he does it the less he actually pays attention to how Clary feels about all this. Jace is a bit full of himself, but Clary still continues to love him because he's only like that to cover up how dark and depressed he really is. FAST FORWARD AGAIN End of Book Three, Jace and Clary aren't siblings anymore because Valentine was lying about their heritage. Clace immediately sets sail because of this joyous news. Hurrah, now they can be together and not hate themselves! Happy Endings! FAST FORWARD SIX WEEKS INTO BOOK FOUR Six weeks after the joyous news, Clace is sailing strong. Extremely strong. Uncomfortably strong. Strong like "cover your book in class so people don't think it's Fifty Shades of Grey". Throughout all of this bizarrely detailed romance, Jace is still keeping secrets. Secrets, a word which here means, Jace has dreams that he and Clary are approaching NC-17 territory and then he just suddenly kills her. So, what Jace does is push Clary away, without giving her any explanation. Clary is left to wonder if Jace still loves her, and spends pretty much the entire book brooding over it. When the two actually do almost approach NC-17 territory, Jace actually grabs a knife from his bedside table and slashes her with it. Clary, instead of, running, tries to talk to Jace, and decides to get him help. Turns out the dreams were a demon thing, and that's what made Jace attack Clary. Woohoo, he's not evil or insane, just possessed. While waiting for the Magical Monks to do a ritual to purge the possession, Jace sneaks out. While out, he gets fully possessed and takes Clary hostage. Jace (under control) hurts Clary again. Once the control is gone because of a big long subplot with Simon and some demon stuff, he continues to hate himself for something he had no control over. Classic Jace, hating himself for literally everything and taking it out on the people around him. Now that I've covered the big long confusing storyline, lets get to a review. Jace and Clary love each other greatly. I don't use that term lightly, they actually say it in the novels. However, I think their Love, much like other young "love" goes a bit overboard. Clace may be a perfect match, but the two of them believe that they are perfect almost instantly. Throughout book four, Clary shows clearly (and frightening) obsession about Jace. Her own thoughts were described along the lines of "it was physically difficult to be so close to Jace without being able to touch him." These words along with others show what seems like addiction, as if Jace was heroin or a Molly Angel Blunt (Or whatever the kids are blazing up these days.) Clary's undying affection throughout all Jace puts her through is unbelieveable. He turns away almost all the time, he hardly ever considers her feelings when he does this, and he has attacked her plenty of times. On the subject of the attacks: Yes sometimes it was under mind control, but the first attack in CoFA was because he had refused her help earlier, which essentially led to the attack. A lot of these points make it sound as if Clace is a mentally (and inadvertently) physically abusive relationship. (Clary not seeing Jace's self-absortion, Jace's self-absorbtion etc) On a sidenote, while Clary's obsession with Jace and Jace's obsession with Clary might not contribute to the abusive hypothesis, it is extremely weird how much they "desperately crave to the feel the other against them". If I had to describe it, I would say that they are addicts to their relationship, doing anything to get their next fix, and sometimes shutting out the outside world because the only thing they can think about is each other. Before you comment hate: This whole rant is something called an opinion. It's normal for a healthy person to have, and they're all different. I'm sorry if our opinions don't correlate. If they don't, please provide some reasonings as to WHY you don't support mine, instead of leaving things like "YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THEM CUS UR JUS FOREVA ALONE" I appreciate any and all opinions, and if you respect mine than I will respect yours.